2. One of my granddaughters recently graduated with a degree in
psychology, and as part of the gifts I gave her was this jokey composite,
framed.
My problem is that I, personally, fear that it might mean something.
In this post, I want to explore various aspects of collecting, especially, as
I have experienced them. There may be some interesting "eddies" along
the way, since most of my readers likely have my "disease."
3. One of the best capturings of the phenomena of becoming a collector,
and then of collecting, is conveyed in Evan Connell's novel "The
Connoisseur."
Here, is just one internet blurb describing it.
"...Connell sends us through the complete experience of a man initially
intrigued and then enslaved by art: a curious interest, a rapt fixation, and
the becoming of a connoisseur. The Connoisseur trails the evolution of
Muhlbach, an insurance executive on a business trip in Taos, New
Mexico, who develops an obsession with pre-Columbian figurines after
meandering through a curio shop. Entranced, yet bewildered, by his
sudden affinity for a little figurine, Muhlbach succumbs to his intrigue
and, thirty dollars later, begins his journey as a connoisseur.
With superb delivery and subtle clarity, Connell allows us to see and feel
Muhlbach's emerging mania, with its impending tension and sudden
exhilaration. He illustrates how a new fixation alters our lens on life and
shapes our actions."
Sound familiar?
4. and a two-cent piece dated in the 1870s.
I think I was first introduced, potentially, to the world of collecting by an
old neighbor lady, who befriended my mother and liked me, too. During
one visit in the early 1940s, she gave me a U.S. penny dated 1846.
5. She clearly expected that if she "started" me, I would collect
more. And I did for a while, in a desultory way, adding a few,
mostly German coins, brought home by WWII soldier uncles,
but then I stalled, and my "collection" was eventually taken over
by my younger brother, who was always more a dealer than a
collector (once, in elementary school, he took a dead mouse to
school and sold it to another kid) and he probably (I don't know)
sold or traded my coins some time after I married and left home.
But there's a principle to notice here: you cannot reliably
encourage someone else to collect. The old neighbor lady was
being kind, but the idea was hers not mine, and it didn't "catch
fire" for me.
6. One doesn't usually "catch" the urge to collect as the result of someone
else's recommendation. What seems most often is to be struck utterly
unaware.
Notice poor Muhlback in Connell's novel. He is a NYC businessman,
who, while on a business trip to New Mexico, wanders into what seems
like a touristy shop and buys, on complete impulse, a small pottery
statue. Before his gets on his plane, he's been to the university,
authenticated his statue as older, and has bought some books on their
like. During the flight he encounters his first dealer. He is utterly puzzled
about what is happening to him, and as the novel plays out, he sees all
the main types in the collecting world, gradually realizes that he has no
real control over his collecting urges or the directions in which they will
move, and is, as the novel ends, in a phone booth, slightly drunk,
bargaining over the next piece.
There are likely people who grow up in a collecting world and come to
collect themselves, but I think that more often collecting comes onto one
as an unexpected disease, about which we joke, but which is real. And it
has features of a disease in that we have no real control over its intensity,
and we cannot tell in what way it will move (us) next.
7. A corollary to "you likely can't foster collecting, reliably," is that it
is equally difficult to stop a collector once he/she has started.
8. A related point is that the variety of things people collect is nearly unlimited. I'm not talking
about accumulating or hoarding, although the lines here can be murky. I'm talking about
someone who is applying some judgment, in a given area of interest, about what is
"collectible" within it, and what is not.
Some kinds of collecting seem understandable.
A recent NY Times article talked about Michael Embacher, an architectural designer, who has
collected 230 bicycles in his attic in Vienna. He owns one of only three Schulz Funiculos, for
which he paid $20,000. But his is the only one that works.
He says that it’s hard to describe to what
his eye goes first when he is first
considering a new acquisition. “…it’s
the whole of the thing of it; the mechanical
system and the design, all the fragile
construction. I don’t have a real strategy of
what I like. It’s all emotional.”
So far, there is no “Embacher,” but he
admits that there are a few drawings. So
a possible direction of continuing is
Indicated. His is a collecting that has a
coherence. His interest is at least
intellectually accessible to most of us,
even If expensive.
9. Collectors are often advised to specialize and Madeline Albright, has followed
that tack: she collects pins with which to decorate the front of a dress. She is,
apparently, a long-time pin collector.
Her pins range widely from quite humble ones to designer and valuable ones.
She has a pin that she wears frequently that a daughter made for her when she
was five.
13. But when she became Secretary of State, it became clear that the pins she wears have,
potentially, a political function.
It happened she has occasion to “speak back to” something Saddam Hussein said and his
press responded, with some vitriol, saying that she was an “unparalleled serpent.”
Albright said that she doesn’t like snakes, but thought it might be useful make a behavioral
response, and looked around and found that she had a serpent pin, and wore it,
ostentatiously, at her next meeting with the Iraqis.
14. This led to a more general practice of wearing pins to convey messages in her
political work.
When she was no longer Secretary of State, she wrote a book on her pin
collection and her use of it in her political work.
15. Albright’s pin collection is assessed as uneven by the experts. I think she
doesn’t care.
There are some that seem sophisticated.
17. At the book’s end, she provides a “Pinology” of her collection. I think I counted 275.
18. There are some seemingly outlandish categories of things that are
seriously collected.
A rug collector I know was once traveling on a small airline in a
foreign country, and picked up, as a curiosity, the air sickness bag
provided.
Subsequently, he discovered that there were some major U.S.
collections of air sickness bags, and that the one he had was rather
rare.
19. This is a poster
presenting air sickness
bags from around the
world.
20. Another rug collector I know, collects in a number of other areas, but
one that draws attention is that he collects vintage condom tins. At
a "bottle" show (to which my wife goes annually) out of curiosity, I
looked around to see whether I could discover some, and found a
"cross-over" condom tin that this rug collector subsequently
bought.
The dealer told me that there is a "literature."
21. There’s a potato chip collection, owned by Conrad Auchincloss and his eighth grade
classes, at Churchill School for learning disabilities in Murray Hill, New York City.
It was started nine years ago by “Mr. A,” to promote world culture and geography.
Students collect, taste and review unique potato chip flavors from around the world.
Auchincloss says that “it has helped heighten student senses.”
The notion of appreciating your collection
by destroying it is interesting.
The “Freaky Chips” collection, as it is called, has totaled more than 400 unique flavors,
arranged by number within region.
22. Collectors can be (perhaps always are a bit) obsessive. In a review of,
David Mason, the Canadian antiquarian bookseller's book "The Pope's
Bookbinder,"
Michael Dirda writes: "Mason loosely organizes his book around the
people in his life --- revered mentors, traitorous friends, valued employees,
favorite customers.
“These last include a well-to-do lawyer who would stop every Saturday,
inquiring for anything related to the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll's "Alice
in Wonderland."
“Mason was eventually invited to appraise this gentleman's highly
specialized collection and discovered that he lived alone in an expensive
apartment, with nothing but a couch, an antique desk, a bed and wall-to-
wall bookshelves entirely devoted to the Mad Hatter. Obsessive?
Perhaps. But deeply satisfying? Unquestionably.“
23. In a recent article in the Times Literary Supplement, James Fergusson
detailed what seems like an extreme collector. His name was Jonathon
Gili and he was still living for part of 2003. Fergusson describes Gili, a
film maker, as "...one of the most extraordinary collectors I have known."
He says that Gili collected books, manuscripts,
cigarette lighters, plastic snowstorms, playing
cards, movie posters, pictures, records (more
than 10,000 singles alphabetically arranged),
hotel sewing kits, luster jugs, key rings, pencil
sharpeners that don't look like pencil sharpeners,
rubbers that look like bananas, crisp packets,
Shell posters, salt and pepper shakers,
refrigerator magnets and sardine tins.
Fergusson reports that Gili's wife (pictured here, and who collects, too)
was indulgent about her husband's collecting, although "whole rooms
were blocked off..." and "she could hardly get into their bed for boxes..."
One wonders who the other "extraordinary" collectors that Fergusson
knew were.
24. I found out by chance that Orhan Pamuk,
the Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize winner in Literature, is a collector.
I'd read a couple of Pamuk's novels and
"My Name is Red," does, prominently,
feature 16th century miniaturist characters
and their art, but I had no real hint that Pamuk,
himself, might be a collector.
The window onto Pamuk's collecting (and
it is a huge one) is his novel "The Innocence
of Objects."
25. Let's look at it as a novel, first, then come back to the collecting.
Pamuk created a star-crossed couple in Istanbul about ten years before
Pamuk was born. There are problems with class differences and,
although they are actual lovers for a while, they eventually fall apart,
because of this. The man, Kemal, comes to regret this, and tries to regain
their relationship. The girl, Fuson, dies early, but Kemal continues to try
to reclaim her by collecting objects that she owned or used (for example
a dress that she ostensibly wore)
or that were part of the context of their time together.
26. So that’s sort of the ‘story’ side, but, as I say, Pamuk is, himself, also an
actual collector.
And the things he collected focus on the creation of cabinet tableaux of
various sides of Kemal’s and Fuson’s relationship and of the Istanbul of
their time.
Cabinet collections were once frequent. My mother collected bells and
had her best ones in an antique, glass-doored cabinet, entirely devoted to
them.
27. Pamuk haunted flea markets during the 1990s, buying, on impulse, items
he liked from the 1970s or before.
After a while, some of these collected items would suggest that they
should be arranged together in a cabinet tableau. So he’d do that, but
then sometimes find that rearranging or additional items was needed.
Pamuk, the collector, also became fascinated with small museums and
bought a house (in the neighborhood where the Fuson character lived)
and turned it into a museum where you can actually go and experience
the tableaux of cabinet art he has collected.
So the novel is a kind of catalog for the museum (it presents, in
numbered sequence, the 83 cabinets there) and the fact of there being a
real museum, feeds back on the novel.
28. One person reported: "I visited the museum after I read the novel, and
with the novel in hand. It was really enjoyable. I didn’t always understand
all of Pamuk’s cabinet tableaus, even helped by his novel comments on
them, but it is, certainly, a very creative endeavor.
The cabinet that most critics seem to like best is one containing 4213
buts of cigarettes that Fuson is said to have smoked.
They are arranged by year, from 1976 through 1984.
29. Near the remains of
each cigarette,
Pamuk has written
something Kemal
told him about that
day.
It took Pamuk the entire
summer of 2011 to do
this.
The novel, the collection,
and the museum housing
it, show that there are a
lot of ways to think about,
and to go about, collecting.
30. We are going to examine things I have collected myself and I want to be
clear, here at the beginning, that I do not collect in what might be called
‘conventional,” certainly not in “meritorious” terms.
I have not sought out the “best of type” in any given category.
This is not within my financial reach.
I do not worry about whether what I am collecting might be seen as
“worthy” by others.
I do not claim any particular quality for the items I have collected.
I cannot, often, explain their appeal to me.
They just engage me in some way and continue to do so.
So if at any point you discover that my collections do not speak to you,
you are excused without prejudice.
These are my collections, not yours.
31. Some of areas in which I collect are more explainable than others.
I am, primarily a textile collector and my mother was likely a tap root of
that.
She was a skilled seamstress, knitter, crotchetier, basket, hat and teddy
bear maker. (She once taught a young girl to make teddy bears. The last
time I heard, maybe 20 years ago, that girl had made over 2,000 teddy
bears. You need to be careful with whom you share your enthusiasms.)
32. Perhaps the most direct connection from my mother to my collecting is “clothing.” I have
a small group of clothing items.
33. My mother both made and collected dolls, and I bought her three primitive dolls
made by a University of Michigan art professor.
34. When my mother died, these dolls came back to me and I find that I have
added to them over the years, usually small dolls in ethnic dress
35.
36. The piece on the right is a Seminole “corn husk”
doll of the sort that Seminole ladies used to sell at
road side in Florida.
37. .These “dolls” even include a Charlie McCarthy hand puppet, in a Sherlock
Holmes costume, and a small, marble statue in an iron chair. Categories begin to
edge onto one another.
38. My mother made teddy bears, and so the collecting of teddy bears was in my
environment during my visits with her.
I got into collecting teddy bears in a small way as an offshoot of the fact that my wife was
for a while a serious collie breeder and exhibitor.
A large part of the standard against which collies are judged in the ring is devoted to head
qualities, and “expression” is something treated with special seriousness.
Although my mother made nice bears, to me, influenced by collie standards, the heads of
her bears lacked “expression,” and I thought I’d provide her a favorable model. So I went
to a large teddy bear show and bought her a designer teddy bear that seemed to me to
have good expression
39. This is what a $400 designer teddy bear looked like in the early 80s.
40. In subsequent years we picked up a few additional teddy bears. The Chinese
make pretty good teddy bears and for less than $400 each. Here are two of our
articulated Chinese bears.
41. We don’t own a Steiff teddy bear (the antique
ones are expensive), BUT my wife does own
two Steiff collies.
Collecting categories and tendencies do bleed
into one another.
42. An uncle taught me to play chess when I was about nine.
I never played seriously (classical offenses and defenses, a club, a clock) but I
have played in a desultory way for most of my life, and there is always a chess
board set up in our living room.
43. This nearly life-long association, albeit casual, with chess is why I collect chess
sets.
This one, that you saw more closely in the
previous slide, is in the “Staunton” style:
the style adopted for competitive play.
Permit me a little excursion about the
Staunton style chess men.
This style was created and adopted because chess set designs had proliferated
so widely that one often could not discern which piece was which during play.
44. The Staunton knight is
patterned on the “Elgin
Marbles” in the British
Museum.
Although featuring of the
heads of the knight pieces is
not offered as an indicator of
whether a piece is a real
Staunton, serious
comparisons are made with
the featuring and expression
on the Elgin Marble face.
An expression of fatigue
and anguish, is particularly
sought.
45. “Staunton” style chess sets were first offered by that name in 1849 and so some are now
valuable antiques.
The features that indicate that a given set is a real “Staunton,” made by the French firm
Jaques, that manufactured them, vary. But some are taken to be strongly indicative. For
example some are embossed in particular ways.
I own a complete chess set sold to me as a real Staunton. The indicators on it are that
one of each color of the knights and the rooks is embossed with a crown.
46. I have quite a few chess sets, some complete, some “broken.” The one below
is a complete set in metal and the Staunton style. These pieces are very heavy
in hand.
47. A “broken” (incomplete) set ,bought in England, has been put in a glass to
facilitate our cleaning lady’s work.
49. There are miniature chess sets, sometimes just for looking at, but some
intended for play during travel.
Here’s a nicely made little set, that could be played with, but it’s size (4”x4”)
makes it hard to recognize the pieces and crowds the board (pieces are too
large for the squares on the board) during play. The pieces adhere to the
board magnetically.
50. Here are two more of the “mostly to look at” variety. Notice that the one on the
right is in cardboard. The “pin in hole” design of the one on the left is unstable.
We’ll see a better one in a minute.
51. Here is a slightly larger traveling chess set. I think it is very attractive, has good
spatial qualities, but is a shade too large (9”x9”) to pass back and forth. The
pieces are of the more sturdy “button in a hole” variety. I have two of these and
would buy any others that I encountered and could afford.
52. This is the best traveling
set design I have seen.
The pieces are shaped like
small guitar picks and fit
into the bottom slit of any
square they are to occupy.
It has good spatial qualities
at 4.25”x7” with two rows,
top and bottom, of holding
slots for taken pieces.
Notice that the backs of the
pieces have checkers
symbols, including some
for “kinged” situations.
I would also buy other
examples of this type.
53. Now, of course, if you collect chess sets, you encounter vintage chess and checkers
books and manuals.
I have bought such books, published in the first half of the 20th
century, including one
programmed instruction piece, interesting because I used to build programmed instruction
myself. It is, as such things tend to be, meticulous, but tedious.
54. This is an instance that shows how insidious collecting moves can be. This is
the first quilt that I owned. I bought it on impulse, not thinking that it would lead
to anything.
It is a mere 6.25 x 8 inches with a cheater (printed, not pieced) front panel.
I liked the little school houses. I’m
a sucker for “medallion” designs.
55. But it is a real quilt with a front panel, maybe a little batting, and a plain back
panel sewn together. The quilters say the quilting is good and this piece, in the
right context, might be valuable.
56. Next came a doll’s quilt in a “nine-patch” design.
57. Then I began to look for small quilts and found this pillow with a quilt face in the
“cathedral windows” design. This design is very difficult to make.
58. Another quilt form, that comes in a diminutive version, is the “yo-yo.” This one
is 11 x 14 inches.
59. A few years later, I ran into a king-sized yo-yo quilt, easily the best large one
I’ve ever seen. I had it couched onto a dark green backing cloth. It will take a
few images to give you a sense of it.
60.
61.
62. Early on, I bought a “penny rug.” Maybe only marginally a quilt, but sometimes
grouped with them.
63. A quilter friend sent me a
get well card that is a quilt.
There are kits, but this is a
real one.
64. One day, at the Georgetown flea market, I found this quilt, done by a WWII
Seabee, using Seabee shoulder patches.
65. Then I found what seems likely an
Afro-American quilt. The design is called
“angels at the crossroads,” an “underground
railroad” reference to Cleveland, Ohio.
66. Quite recently I found another flea market quilt. The quilting is not much, but the design graphics and
color use attract me. But it makes me admit that I’ve
become a quilt collector, although I never intended that.
67. Boxes are harder to explain and I don’t think I have ever collected them self-consciously,
either. I just bought them because I found them attractive or interesting in some way,
This is the box in which the “Staunton” chess set, we’ve talked about above, came. It has
a label which may be another indicator that it is a real one made by Jaques.
68. But about boxes.
I have a few more chess set boxes, two of which contain
miniature chess sets
69. This one is also
a playing board,
and is more
dramatic than
some.
72. tin boxes of various sorts, usually without any decorative writing on them for some reason,
73.
74.
75. This is a box with illustrations
on all sides. Some kind of
composite that has an ivory feel,
but is not. The right image,
above, is the underside of the
lid. Those below are the sides.
76. This is a shallow box with what seem to be Indian polo players in ethnic costume.
77. The polo players in Indian ethnic costume continue around the sides.
A little strange to me.
79. As we’ve examined it, it appears likely to be a “marriage,” that is, the top is from
one box, and the bottom from another (although they fit perfectly).
80. The next box is one that shows that you can lose track of your collections. This
is a small cylindrical box, the top half of which slides off to reveal a sealed
compartment underneath. I think it is, likely, an inexpensive tea caddy.
81. But when I took the inside
top off, I found another
collection that I had
forgotten I had.
These are small tops made
from exotic woods. Small
and pointed enough to be
dangerous for small
children without
supervision.
I think I must have put
them in there to make them
more secure.
And they were, even for a
while, from me.
82. This little box was given to me by my brother. He thought it was 18th
century.
84. I even have another
likely 18th
century box-
like piece (I am using it
as a box), but which is
not one.
85. You’ve seen how thick it’s walls are and it has lovely hand dovetails.
86. But a little examination quickly shows
that it was a drawer from a piece of
furniture.
The holes for the drawer pull are
clearly visible.
And the way the bottom panel is
planed also shows that it’s a
drawer.
Never mind. It works very well
as a box.
87. I don’t know how to explain why I collect blocks
or why I collect the blocks I collect.
I do search for the unusual, but often respond, for some reason, to quite
ordinary blocks
93. When I bought these blocks, I thought they were unusual. But two weeks ago, I
saw two more complete sets on a single day at a flea market. I may buy more.
They come in a
shallow, wheeled
wagon with which
a child could pull
them about.
I’ve decided that
The lobster-style
basket displays
them more effectively.
94. A last set of blocks requires a little explanation. As you can see, it is really part of my
wife, Jo Ann’s, collie image collecting. I have appropriated it here in my treatment of
personal collecting because I found it and partly paid for it. But there is no question that it
is hers, not mine.
It is likely the best set of blocks we own, certainly the most expensive. Great color.
95. These blocks have
six sides, but we’re only
interested in this one.
The seeming solid
light blue on the front
side is an area of sky
in another picture.
Notice that the block on
the bottom right corner
is from another picture.
That block needs to be
turned.
96. My next collection demonstrates that collections that seem visited on you
unexpectedly, can have roots that have by laying about for years waiting to
ensnare you.
Years ago, my brother took me to a flea market in Dearborn, Michigan. If you
had told me at 7:30 am that morning that by 8:30 am I would have bought an
ebony and silver B-flat clarinet,
I would have said that you were crazy, but that’s what I did.
97. More, I immediately knew that I needed two more musical instruments and I
knew what they were: a silver flute and an ebony, piccolo.
98. Why did I want these three instruments?
Where did this urge suddenly come from?
After a little thought, I remembered being
impressed by a French slapstick movie “The
Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe.” The
hero was a musician and I noticed that on
the walls of his apartment he had lots of,
seemingly, antique musical instruments
arrayed as sculptures.
I had filed that away, until the B-flat clarinet
assaulted me that morning.
I knew that I had thought how nice three
musical instruments would look like on a
wall as sculpture.
99. So I’ve gradually acquired the three
instruments I envisioned. Unfortunately, I
no longer have an appropriate open wall.
But this shows how insidious and
articulated the source of an urge to collect
can be.
My original attraction not, only specified
the instruments I needed, it indicated how
they should be placed on the wall, with
the B-flat clarinet in the center and ebony
piccolo on the right.
Strange.
100. Andy Warhol once came into a
Greenwich Village antique shop
that had an array of clocks on its
wall and asked what the price of
their clocks was.
“Which one?” they asked.
“Oh, all of them,” he said. “They
looks so nice together.”
He bought them.
This is how collectors are.
When he died, they were found in
his house still in the boxes in
which they had been delivered.
101. There’s another odd way in
which collecting can occur:
the discovery, after the fact,
that you have done so.
Here is the first of my
collections in two related
groups.
These are items of nautical
equipment from, or related
to, the era of large sailing
ships. On the right are two
images of the same two
pieces. The one on the left,
in both cases is the same
Marlin Spike with knotted
hanger. The piece on the
right is a contemporary
nautical bell pull made with
18th
century materials and
methods.
102. The third piece in this group of nautical tools and aids is a large, very sharp
chisel-like tool used to smooth the decks of large sailing ships.
My brother turned (on a lathe) a new handle, using a wood with an exotic grain.
It is 25 inches long and carries two stamps.
103. A last item in this nautical tool
or aid collection is a knotted,
nautical basket.
Notice that it has two round
handles that permit it to be tied
securely [things move on a
ship; everything has to be hung
up, tied down or padded
(bottles and cups are padded;
a comb is hung up on
something that has loop on the
top and un-plied textile on the
bottom, into which the comb
can be pressed)].
104. A closely related
collection is
macramé.
I have some
sampler sticks.
Notice that the
names of the
stitches being
displayed are
indicated on the
larger ones.
The “Turk’s
head” variations
are not labeled
because the only
difference is in
the number of
strands.
105. In the 70s, I was a serious macramé knotter. I have collected some of my own
work. Left, is a plant hanger with no splices; center, is a no splice sampler; and
right, is a checkerboard, the latter almost all in double half-hitch, a show-off
piece.
106. I find that I have four items that are wallets or purses.
107. These are “belts.“ An Indian riding camel girth; a WW I needle-point belt, likely made by a
soldier in convalescence, and a macramé belt I tied in the 1970s, based on a 19th
century
nautical design.
On the back of the needle-point belt are
names of British air bases, done in ink.
I have never set out to collect belts.
108. I have also never set out to collect small bottles, but find that I have three of very diverse
types. The bottle on the left is likely a perfume bottle with needlepoint on two sides.
The center Afghan bottle may be a decorated gourd, and seems, despite a stopper, too
large to be a perfume bottle. The right and lower right, shoe-shaped and lidded, bottle,
may be common to some, but is a puzzlement to me. Someone will know.
109. I never thought of collecting trays, but my wife and I have, together, acquired a
collection of them. Here they are, one at a time.
,
This is, obviously, my wife’s contribution. Probably porcelain. It is quite heavy
and has several makers’ marks.
110. Metal.
Looks a little like a
rug.
The field is
directional. The
corners of the main
borders are
resolved.
Sits on a small mat
on a bedside
antique table.
111. It’s just color for me. Know nothing about it. It has legs underneath.
112. I’ve got a few tools related to traditional weaving life.
The comb-like piece is for beating down wefts when
weaving. The piece on the right is a Russian distaff
for holding material conveniently to be spun. The
piece at the bottom is another distaff from an
Anatolian spinning wheel.
113. This is a Turkman kitchen tool for punching holes in bread to keep it from
rising. The workmanship is incredible, and the hanger (bottom center) is likely
younger, but is a hanging device like one that was part of the tool originally.
The long pin was dropped down a hole bored in the trellis tent frame and was
both convenient to pick up to use and then to store out of the way. I bought it
“blind.” A Russian curator told me that its designs suggest that it is Yomut.
114. I said early that we cannot predict how strong our collecting urges will be, and in which
direction(s) they are likely to move, and I think that is generally true. BUT, there can be
what may turn out to be “indicators.“
I have never collected jewelry. I find my wife doesn’t like the kinds of pieces that tend to
attract me (heavy Turkman things). But I have a bracelet of miniatures hand-painted on
rectangular pieces of bone (not ivory). I might buy more pieces like this, if I could find
and afford them. I think they may be tourist items, but the work in them is remarkable.
115. I have two metal glass holders of a sort you see in Iran, and maybe
elsewhere.
I like them very much, and keep my eyes open for, at least, one more
(it is said that you only have a “collection” if you have three of a kind).
116. My brother collected watches and watch works. He found and turned a base for a watch
works that, if you look closely enough, you’ll find is signed “John Howe.” Howe was a
watch maker in Massachusetts (died 1680), and also the father of Elias Howe, the
inventor of the sewing machine. I would buy more watch works signed by this John
Howe, although they are difficult to display.
117. We’ve talked a lot about my collecting and haven’t really said much about its textile core.
There are a lot of rugs on the walls.
121. Remember the TLS reviewer who wondered who the other collectors were who
might be as strange as Jonathon Gili and his nice wife?
122. It’s a good thing I live in a one-bed room condo, with a wife who is a collector,
too. There’s keen competition for display space (notice how many collections of
only three items, there are, and that with overlapping between us?).
If I had a little more space, we might wonder whether I might not be as strange
as Gili.
